Turkey: Where East Meets West

So, I'm heading home tomorrow and I have yet to tell about my past week spent in Turkey. When we arrived in Prague Sunday morning, Ana and I literally had 24 hours before we needed to leave for Istanbul. We went to the apartment and slept, and all of us kind of just relaxed. This was the last time I'd see Ekta and Tete, so we were planning to go out on Sunday night, for one last hoorah, but we didn't even make it for a drink! Ana and I had some rearranging to do luggage wise, whereas Tete and Ekta had a few days to pack. We ended up going to sleep relatively early and on Monday morning, Ana and I woke up around 8 AM to head to the airport. Now, remember how I always have the most outrageous things happen to me when I'm travelling? This is certainly a first.

Ana and I woke up at 8 AM, showered, packed, and were ready to go by 8:30 AM. Our flight left at 11:35 AM, so we were giving ourselves plenty of time to reach the airport. We were saying our finals goodbyes to Tete and Ekta, wishing them the best and telling them that we'd see them soon. As we were saying our goodbyes, Ana begins to leave the apartment and opens the door. Well, the only problem was that the door was locked. Yes, that's right, the door was locked. Now, I'm saying goodbye to Tete, and I hear Ana say from the other room, "Oh My God! The door is locked!" This moment seems to last forever in my head, because I knew right away, we were really screwed.

I 100% knew that there was no way to unlock the door without the key. Now, here's why we didn't have a key. Somewhere in Krakow and Berlin, Ana, and her hoards of clothes, souvenirs, and personal items, seems to have misplaced the key to the apartment. Well how did we get in the apartment you ask? Simply by calling the two people that lived there, Chuey and Elvira (an Argentinian and a Russian). The only problem was, even though Tete, Ekta and Ana have cell phones, only Tete and Ana had credit. After calling the people to let us into the apartment, Tete ran out of credit and only had her Portuguese phone to use. So, anyway, we're locked in the apartment.

I totally blame Ekta for this situation because not only was this her THIRD time being locked in somewhere (AIESEC office, Jenny's house in Roztoky, and now this apartment), her bad luck seemed to have come back to haunt us at the worst of possible times. Ana and I had a flight to catch! In three hours! So we thought, what could we do? Chuey and Elvira were at work, because it was a Monday morning. Someone says that they told one of them not to lock the door on their way out, but I'm not sure they got the message. Either way, I could see how they would naturally lock it because most houses, when you lock the front door, don't lock the people inside. I had a few thoughts jump through my mind, like throwing my suitcase out the window and scuffling down the side of the building like Spiderman, but I knew that Ana wouldn't be able to do follow. Tete's phone was with no credit, Ekta's phone was with no credit, but Ana! Ana had one last phone call to make. So she called Chuey.

It was a desperate attempt to cry for help, but he picked up and we tried our best to explain the situation. Poor Chuey, he was always letting us in when we didn't have a key, but this time he couldn't help. He said he was going to call a few people, because someone was supposed to be dropping off an extra key sometime during the day. Luckily, Ana can receive calls without using credit, so when he called back, he just said that he couldn't get a hold of anyone and we would just have to wait. Great…

By this time, I was just completely frustrated and angry. I was doing nothing to help the situation, because I had no phone and no internet and nothing else, so I laid down in bed and just fell back asleep. I took about an hour nap and woke up to Ana telling everyone that she got a hold of one of the other Brazilian interns and he was doing his best to call everyone and try and get us out of the apartment. Eventually at 10:30 AM (2 hours later) we received word that Lessya was coming to drop the keys off. At this point, we were really confused because Lessya was supposed to be back in Kazakhstan, but we figured it was a different Lessya.

Turns out, around 11:00 AM, Lessya shows up at the front door, and in comes our favorite group leader from Kazakhstan! In all the excitement, Ana and I barely had any time to say hello to Lessya or goodbye to Ekta and Tete and we were out the door within 2 minutes. The fresh air couldn't have seemed more refreshing. I knew we were definitely going to miss our flight, and we arrived at the airport around 11:45 AM. Knowing that we are broke college students (I guess college grad for me), the airlines charged us a €50 rebooking fee and our flight left at 18:30. Great. Not only did we have to wait 6 hours at the airport, but we had to pay $60 to change our flight, just because someone locked us in, we had no keys out, and Ekta was with us.

We eventually caught our next flight, arrived in Turkey around 10 PM and began our next journey in a whole other world.

Praha in Three

Well, it's been a while since I last updated, but it's been a busy month. Since my last entry I've graduated from Fordham, meaning I'm now an alumni--which makes me feel old--but on the other hand I've also received a degree--which makes it all worthwhile. Yesterday, my parents and I went shopping for new luggage. My previous set was on its last leg, having gone to China, Europe, Mexico, and numerous other places within the US. The new luggage is a great piece of gear for my next adventure and will hopefully last through many more to come.

The details of the summer program are starting to come together. The international leaders have been keeping in touch through a Google group, through which we can share information about ourselves and help each other out. During each camp there will be international nights where each of us has to represent our country. We've been giving feedback to each other about what we want to know about the other's country. I'm the most excited to talk to the leader from Izmir, Turkey. Since I have a few weeks after the camps, I definitely want to go to Turkey for a week and spend a few days in Istanbul, before making my way to Cappadocia for a few days. Cappadocia is a part of Turkey that has been molded by volcanoes and shaped by erosion. The rock formations are spectacular and the porous rock allows for underground cities, castles in the side of cliffs, giant rock columns, and much more. Here's how one blogger describes Cappadocia:

“an incredible volcanic-created landscape of fairy chimneys, natural stone castles and underground dwellings of ancient civilizations and early Christian hideouts. It is one of those unique places on Earth where nature and humans lived in harmony over the years and left over amazing traces of Civilizations and Culture.”

Check out some pictures here: Cappadocia, Turkey.

Besides Turkey, I plan to spend a few days in Berlin (Germany), Krakow (Poland), and Vienna (Austria). From Prague, Berlin and Vienna are 4-5 hours by train and Krakow is about 8.5 hours by train. I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to do all of them, but I’d really want to see these cities and at least do the tourist stuff.

When I’m actually in Prague, I’m going to be very busy. I’m a little disappointed that the weather forecast for my first week there is rain and a high of 70°F. But otherwise, when I arrive, I’ll be going straight to work on the projects that the students will have to complete in small teams (with their leader’s help). Right now, my boss has been working hard with the top four universities in Prague to get their input for what they would like the students to realize over their two week session with us. So far I worked with Lessya, from Kazakhstan, to outline the projects that we will be giving the students during the camp. I’ll tell you more about them once we figure out the details and have more information from the universities. One thing for sure that I’m looking forward to in Prague is a Green Day concert that all of the leaders and MBM staff are going to on June 29^th! It’ll be a ton of fun even though I don’t listen to Green Day that much. I’ll probably have another update before I leave, but if not, the next post will be from Prague. Stay tuned, knowing me and travelling, it’s bound to be a great story…